Topband: Beverage thru the forest

[Herb Schoenbohm]

Chet wrote:
> The first thing Dallas W3PP and I
> and used to do when I went up there for the dx contests was to walk the beverages.  He had 4 of them and they were just run through the trees and saplings on his 10 acre lot.  

Walking the Beverages used to be fun but here what used to be a hay 
field is now overgrown in waist high heavy tropical grasses, cactus, and 
huge boot piecing thorns not to mention sink holes and fire ants.    
With 8 Beverages I had to find a better way to see if everything was 
working. So the obvious checks such as F/B checks with BC stations or 
recorded signal reports is the first step.  If the East Beverage on the  
90 degree BC Station is stronger on the the NE or SE Beverage this is a 
good sign something is wrong.  If a Beverage F/B has disappeared chances 
are that the termination is zapped......or you can check the loop 
resistance via the feed end to ground and expect something in the 
vicinity of 500 ohms with a 470 ohm termination.

With the MFF 269B I can run a check from the shack which is a real feel 
good quick test before a contest.  I simply plug the RX antenna cable 
which runs from the various switch boxes in my MFJ-269B Analyzer and 
switch through all the RX antennas.  When they are all below 2:1 (most 
are least than 1.5) then the need to worry is reduce.  This way I have 
found bad splices, rat  gnawed RG-6,  open terminations. etc. 

Knowing that something is wrong and starting with the obvious before 
heading into the savanna  with a repair kit can be a real saver of time 
and effort.

73,

Herb Schoenbohm, KV4FZ